The Forty Rules of Love

The Forty Rules of Love is a novel by Turkish author Elif Shafak published after her novel The Bastard of Istanbul, in this novel the author narrates two parallel stories, one in the contemporary time and the other in the thirteenth century, when Rumi faced his spiritual guide, the wandering Dervish known as "Shams of Tabriz" and how they both embodied the message of eternal love poetry. The translated book The Forty Rules of Love was published in the United States in February 2010 and also in the United Kingdom by Penguin Publishing in June 2010. The book has sold 550,000 copies and thus became the best-selling book in Turkey. The author of the novel is Elif Shafak (in Turkish Elif Şafak), a Turkish novelist who writes in both Turkish and English, and her works have been translated into more than thirty languages.